When Brian Ching was 7 years old, he told his mother the only way he'd take up AYSO soccer would be if she promised to serve as the coach.

Twenty years later the stream of text messages and arrival of clippings are evidence Stephanie Whalen is still on the job.

Never mind that Ching has been the leading scorer in Major League Soccer with the Houston Dynamo this season and a member of the U.S. World Cup squad, the support, suggestions and critiques from home have not abated. Soccer mom remains on duty, ever vigilant.

Though he might sometimes feign exasperation telling her, he says, "I have coaches; I have a trainer..." Ching said he counts his blessings on days like today and looks forward to the World Cup next month when he can share the view from the pinnacle of his career with the lady who helped guide him there.

"It (the World Cup in Germany beginning June 9) will be the highlight of my career and to have my mom there is gonna be great," Ching said. "I want her there because she has had such a big effect upon my life."

Ching is one of two players from Hawai'i to be drafted by a pro team and the first to make a World Cup squad, all accomplishments unimagined when his mother patiently began teaching him the sport straight out of an AYSO manual.

Life's other lessons, however, have come from the heart and been equally valuable. "If it wasn't for her I don't know where any of us would be," Ching said. "She's a single mother who raised three of us boys and we weren't the easiest. She taught us the importance of education made sure college was there if we wanted it. She drove us everywhere. She's smart, she's self-educated, has a career (as president and chairman of the Hawai'i Agriculture Research Center) and she has done so much. I don't know if I could ever express enough thanks for all she's done."

Soccer and the enduring bond it forged was something nobody saw coming. An accomplished volleyball player, Whalen wanted her boys to take up sports early, and soccer seemed to offer growth opportunities. So she'd drive them from their Hale'iwa home to Mililani or Pearl City. Brian, her middle son, wasn't buying into it immediately. And, when he did, it was with a strict proviso that "my mom would coach me."

The challenge was accepted and, in what friends attest has been her trademark zeal and thoroughness, tackled head on and mastered. "I was an athlete so I went to books to figure it out," Stephanie said. "I'd read the book, put (drills) on index cards and put them in my pocket and pull them out when it came time to do the next thing."

Teaching her son the basics was but part of the job. Harnessing and shaping his sharp competitive instinct and diesel drive would sometimes be a bigger task, but one that has paid huge dividends.

After a year Ching was hooked on the sport and mom, who could have been off the hook, never really wandered far away. "After that first year she was still at every game," Ching said. "She enjoyed being out there and eventually started playing it (soccer) herself."

She would also be there, as opportunities permitted, watching, encouraging from the sidelines as he played at Kamehameha Schools, with the Bulls club and at Gonzaga University, where he earned a scholarship. Through fractured cheek bones, broken noses, ruptured tendons and the lows that accompanied them, she commiserated and counseled.

Even now, in the MLS, Ching hears from his mother when he has a good header or is struggling. "She watches television and we send her tapes," Ching said. And, she text messages or mails reviews and suggestions. "We have a good enough relationship that when I tell her to stop, she stops," Ching said.

The possibility that he would make the U. S. World Cup team — considered a longshot by most almost up until the final weeks — was something she recognized early on and seized upon. Whalen said she booked the trip to Europe with a group of friends on hope — and a hunch. She even came up with a jersey. "I wanted to be there, just in case he made it," she said.

Call it a mother's intuition. Or, just a coach's feeling.

After 20 years, the two have long since become intertwined.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.